CHAPTER XV
THE PERILS OF THE HILLS
Suddenly Roy gave a sharp exclamation. Something about a cone-shaped peak to the west of them appeared familiar.
"The camp is in that direction, I'm sure of it," he declared, "come on, Peg, we'll strike out for it, and in half an hour's time we'll be telling our adventures over a good supper."
By this time Peggy was willing to start anywhere if she was moderately sure the camp lay in that direction, and Roy's enthusiasm was contagious. Filled with renewed hope the brother and sister struck out for the cone-shaped peak. Its naked base showed violet in the evening shadows, while its sharply rounded top was bathed in a rosy glow of light. Even in her agitation Peggy could not help admiring the wonderful palette of colors into which the dying day transformed the dreary desert sea.
Beyond the range the vast expanse of solitude spread glitteringly. All crimson and violet, with deep purple marking the depressions in its monotonous surface, and here and there the dry bed of one of its spasmodic lakes, showing almost black in its obscurity. These lakes were water-filled only in the early spring, and their moisture had long since died out of them. Under a noon-day sun they showed like shallow bowls filled with scintillating crystals.
But, had they known it, Roy and Peggy were striking out on a course precisely opposite to that which they should have taken. Every step of the advance to the sugar-loaf shaped peak was a step in the wrong direction. Like many other travelers, whose bones whiten on the alkali, they had become confused by the monotonous similarity of one feature of the dreary hills to the other.
The true extent of their blunder did not dawn upon them till they had reached the foot of the queer peak, and even the most minute survey of their surroundings failed to show them any trace of the camp. No cheerful glow of a fire illumined the fast darkening sky. For all the signs of human life they could discover, they might have been alone in a dead world. In fact, the scenery about them did resemble very closely those maps of the moon—the dead planet—which we see in books of astronomy. There were the same jagged, weird peaks, the same dark centers, dead and extinct, and the same brooding hush of mystery which we associate with such scenes.
Somewhere off in the distance a coyote howled dismally as the sun rushed under the horizon and the world was bathed in sudden darkness.
Peggy turned to her brother with a low little moan. She caught her arms about his neck and hung there sobbing. In his solicitude for her, Roy forgot his own dismay and misery, which was perhaps a good thing, for by the time Peggy recovered herself, the boy was already casting about for some means of passing the night as comfortably as possible.
"We'll stick it out till daylight some how, Peg," he promised, "and I'm confident that by that time they'll send up one of the monoplanes, and from up in the air they'll have no difficulty in locating us."
The thought was a comforting one, and Peggy's first flush of passionate grief and fear gave way to calmer feelings. No doubt it would be as Roy had forecast. After all, she argued, it was only one night in the open, and they had their weapons and plenty of ammunition.
By a stroke of good luck, Roy had stuffed his pockets full of the hard round biscuits known as "pilot bread" before they left the camp. He also had matches and a canteen full of water. Poor Peggy still carried the lone jack-rabbit, the trophy of her gun, and Roy at once set about grubbing up sage brush and making a fire with the oleaginous roots as he had seen Mr. Bell do.
Before long a roaring blaze was ready, and then the boy began the task of skinning and preparing the rabbit for cooking. Peggy turned away during this operation, but summoned up fortitude enough to gaze on while her brother spitted the carcass on the cleaning rod of his rifle and broiled it in primitive fashion.
"First call for dinner in the dining car forward!" he announced in as gay a voice as he could command when the cooking seemed to be finished.
"The first course is broiled jack rabbit with pilot bread and delicious, sparkling alkali water. The second course is broiled jack rabbit with—"
"Oh, Roy, don't," cried Peggy half hysterically; "it reminds me of the train and the good times we had on the way out from the East. We didn't think then that—"
"Let me give you some broiled jack-rabbit," proffered Roy, gallantly extending a bit of smoking meat on the end of his knife.
Peggy bit it daintily, expecting to make a wry face over it, but to her surprise she found it not half bad. Between them, the two hungry young people speedily reduced that rabbit to first principles.
"And now for dessert," exclaimed Roy, in a triumphant voice. "No,
I'm not joking—look here!"
He drew from his pocket a flat, pink box which, on being opened, proved to contain several cakes of chocolate of Peggy's favorite brand.
"Oh, dear," sighed Peggy as she nibbled away at the confection, "if only I knew positively that we were going to come out all right I'd really be inclined to enjoy this as a picnic."
"Hooray! here comes the moon," cried Roy, after an interval, during which the chocolate steadily diminished in quantity.
Over the eastern horizon, beyond the desolate peaks and barren "ocean" of the desert, a silver rim crept. Rapidly it rose till the full moon was climbing on her nightly course and flooding the alkali with a soft radiance almost as bright as subdued electric light. Against the glow the weird, ragged peaks stood out as blackly as if cut out of cardboard. One could see the tracery of every bit of brush and rock outlined as plainly as if they had been silhouetted by an artist at the craft.
All at once Peggy gave a frightened little cry and shrank close to
Roy. The firelight showed her face drawn and startled.
"Oh, Roy, over there! No, not that peak—that one to the right!"
"Well, sis, what about it?" asked Roy indulgently.
"Something moved! No, don't laugh, I'm sure of it."
"A coyote maybe or another jack rabbit. In that case we'll have a chance at a shot."
"No, Roy, it wasn't an animal." Peggy's tones were vibrant with alarm—tense as a taut violin string. "What I saw was a man."
"A man. Nonsense! Unless it was someone from the camp looking for us."
"No, this man was watching us. He may have been crouching there for a long time. I saw the outline of his sombrero black against the moonlight behind that rise. Oh, Roy, I'm frightened."
"Rubbish," declared Roy stoutly, although his heart began to beat uncomfortably fast. "What man could there be here unless it was Alverado, and he couldn't possibly have arrived by this time."
"But, Roy, it wasn't my fancy. Truly it wasn't. I saw a man crouching there and watching us. When I looked up he vanished."
"Must have been a rock or something, sis. Moonlight plays queer tricks you know. Don't let's make the situation any worse by imagining things."
"It was not imagination," repeated Peggy stoutly.
But Roy, perhaps because he did not wish to, would not admit the possibility of Peggy's vision being correct.
A long, loud cry like the laughing of an imprisoned soul cut the stillness startlingly.
"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"
"Coyotes!" laughed Roy, "that's what you saw."
Peggy said nothing. The sudden sharp sound had rasped her overwrought nerves cruelly.
"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"
The demoniacal laughing, half howl, half bark, cut the night again.
This time it came from a different direction. From other grim peaks the cry was caught up. It seemed that the creatures were all about them.
"Surrounded!" muttered Roy a bit nervously. He had not forgotten the fight in the canyon, although, as he knew, coyotes, only on the very rarest occasions, when driven desperate by hunger, attack mankind.
The cries appeared to come from all quarters now. And they were drawing nearer, course lay to the eastward there was no mistaking that.
"They are closing in on us, sis. Better load up that gun."
As he spoke Roy refilled the magazine of his little twenty-two rifle.
"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"
This time the cry was quite close and behind them. Roy switched sharply round. The surroundings, the uncanny cries, the solitude were beginning to tell on his nerves, too. His self-control was being wrought to a raw edge.
Was it fancy, or as he switched abruptly about did he actually see a dark object duck behind a rock? An object that bore a strange resemblance to a sombrero.
"Good gracious, I musn't become as shaky as this," the boy thought, making a desperate effort to marshal his faculties, and then he sniffed sharply.
"What is it, Roy?" asked Peggy strangely calm now in the face of what she deemed must prove an emergency.
Roy's answer was peculiar.
"I smelled tobacco just now, I'm sure of it," he whispered in a low tone. "I guess you were right, sis."
"But the coyotes?"
"Are men signaling to each other and closing in on us."
As he spoke the boy scattered the fire, and seizing Peggy by the arm dragged her into the black shadow of the cone-shaped peak.